PRESENCE 

M BISHOP BRENT SI 




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PRESENCE 



PRESENCE 



BY 

CHARLES H. BRENT, D.D. 

BISHOP OF THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS 



'A body is present wherever its 
[attractive] influence is felt. 



»» 






LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 

FOURTH AVENUE & 30TH STREET, NEW YORK 
LONDON, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA 

1914 



\1$ 



^y^ 



Copyright, 1914, 
By LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 



MAY II 1914 



Press of 

J. J. Little A Ives Co. 

New York 




. </*> 



CI.A371766 
/ 



£ 



TO 

THOSE WHOSE PERPETUAL PRESENCE 

IS MY PERPETUAL JOY, 

MY FRIENDS 



PREFATORY NOTE 

FOR some years I have been pur- 
suing a thought, or is it that the 
thought has been pursuing me ? At any 
rate it now possesses me as an operative 
conviction, rising above the shapeless- 
ness of mere speculative opinion, and 
blessing and consoling me at every turn. 
As it has to do with life's gravest prob- 
lems and biggest opportunities, I shall 
snatch the leisure of an ocean voyage in 
which to give expression to it. It has 
helped me to make the relationships of 
life with the world of men and things, 
and with God, deeper, and to keep them 
fresh and scintillating. My hope is that 
this attempt to make others see what I 
see may avail to give them a new un- 

[ vii ] 



PREFATORY NOTE 

derstanding of and joy in the meaning 
of Presence, human and Divine. 

C H. B. 

SS. "Chiyo Maru/' 
lb December, 1913. 



[ vi u ] 



PRESENCE 

IT is no kindness to impose upon 
searchers for truth the tyranny of 
a static definition. We probably come 
nearer reality by the aid of accumulated 
illustrations than by the most brilliant 
attempt to explain truth by a phrase. 
It is startling and instructive that the 
Teacher of teachers never indulged in 
definitions. It was by suggestion that 
set the imagination aflame, and by apt 
story telling that stimulated thought by 
first puzzling it, that Christ drove home 
eternal truth. 

But definition has its place in all the 
three great sciences of theology, philos- 
ophy and physics. Provided its limita- 

[ i ] 



PRESENCE 

tions are recognized it makes for en- 
lightenment. Among its limitations is 
its ephemeral value. It is a momentary 
arrest of the mobile to enable the mind 
by means of the terminology of the day 
to gain new foothold in the eternal. It 
is a window, through which we can look 
into that, of which we ourselves are a 
part, but yet which sweeps by us as we 
look. Definition is always relative to 
the sum total of our knowledge as it 
happens to stand at the moment. Hence 
definition cannot express to two minds 
exactly the same idea. This is certainly 
so of the definition of abstract truth. 
If a static definition arrests thought, it 
does so to imprison it. Whatever in- 
fallibility there may or may not be, 
there can be none of definition. A pro- 
gressive definition, an attempt, in mod- 

c * ] 



PRESENCE 
est spirit, to add a new link to a con- 
tinuous chain of expression, coming 
and going like the lights and shadows 
of an endless day, introduces thought 
into fresh activity and splendid free- 
dom. 

Without running the risk of tyran- 
nizing over thought, I can now proceed 
to such definition as the treatment of 
my subject seems to demand. It is an 
illustrative sort of definition that I shall 
attempt of Presence. That is to say, I 
shall attempt to describe what Presence 
means to me, in such a way as to enable 
my readers to test a process and, if it 
proves sound, to employ it so as to look 
into and enjoy that phase of reality 
which has moved me to give expression 
to it in these pages. The symbol being 
discarded, that symbolized will remain. 

[ 3 ] 



PRESENCE 

Presence, in its purely dictionary 
meaning, is the state of being before. 
It is the operative result of relationships 
of whatever sort. It is juxtaposition 
and all that contact or interpenetration 
involves. That which constitutes pres- 
ence is stated for me in the words of a 
modern philosopher: "A body is pres- 
ent wherever its [attractive] influence 
is felt." 1 Such a definition implies de- 
grees of presence to an infinite extent, 
varying from an indestructible union to 
an attraction of such slender tenuity as 
to be only just more than zero. With 
this in mind it is proper further to aver 
that "When we observe that a thing 
really is there where it acts, we shall be 
led to say (as Faraday was) that all the 
atoms interpenetrate and that each of 

1 Bergson's Creative Evolution, p. 198. 

[ * ] 



PRESENCE 

them fills the world." * It is important 
to maintain this to be so, for if we were 
to restrict presence to mere physical 
contiguity, unity would be a mirage, or 
at best a bundle of faggots, instead of 
that balancing and relationship of the 
sum total of forces which makes us 
neighbors with the farthest fixed star as 
securely as with the threshold of our 
home. 

But if presence has degrees of inten- 
sity it also has deductions of kind. 
Though the higher contains the lower, 
there is added to it that which gives it 
a wholly different character. The pres- 
ence of things to one another, the low- 
est order of presence, is different in kind 
from the presence of animals to things 
or to one another, and of persons to 

1 Bergson's Creative Evolution, p. 214. 

[ 5 ] 



PRESENCE 

things or to one another. There is pas- 
sive presence and active, automatic and 
volitional, unconscious and conscious, 
physical and symbolic, sensory and spir- 
itual — to express the difference in a 
series of parallel terms. 

Passive presence is the property of 
things, whereby each contributes to each 
by automatic interpenetration uncon- 
sciously sustained by inherent affinities 
or resident forces. This same kind of 
presence may exist in the world of per- 
sons, but in the world of things it is the 
only sort of presence of which things 
are capable, independent of that 
ascribed to them, in idealistic fashion, by 
semi-personification on the part of the 
world of persons. Even where things 
are concerned mere contiguity does not 
necessarily connote presence. Contact 

[6] 



PRESENCE 

in the case of opposites is the signal for 
absence, that is to say, antagonism. 
Where two uncongenial bodies meet 
contact heightens repulsion. Or in two 
bodies there may be one passive and 
neutral and one antagonistic, or still 
again one active and one neutral or hos- 
tile. As therefore there are degrees of 
presence, so also are there degrees of 
absence. 

Sensitized matter, as in plant life, has 
a capacity for relationships, that is, for 
presence, not resident in an insensate ob- 
ject. Though belonging to the cate- 
gory of things, the plant has power of 
automatic perception that enables it to 
reach out and appropriate whatever in 
its environment it requires for self re- 
alization. It takes such moisture as it 
needs, or is available, from soil and air, 

m 



PRESENCE 

gathering in the gases and nutriment 
which its surroundings supply. It may 
be quite unconcerned whether or not a 
shell or bit of glass rest near its base, 
but it is quick to recognize whatever is, 
or contains, nourishment. Thus it is 
that there is in the plant world a more 
active establishment of relationships, 
than in the world of things lower than 
its own life. It might be said that the 
plant is less present to its environment 
than environment is to the plant. The 
plant heightens presence by making use 
of unconscious contacts. It is active 
without being conscious. It sensitizes 
contacts and responds to the influence 
thus created. It actually creates a 
world of its own by selecting relation- 
ships congenial to its taste from the var- 
ious things which form its setting. All 

[8] 



PRESENCE 

else is present to it only in the sense of 
contiguity, or as atom is related to atom. 

Where plant life plays upon plant 
life there is mutual automatic percep- 
tion. Two sensitive bodies of close af- 
finity are present each to each in an in- 
terpenetrative way, which reaches its 
zenith in the creative productivity of the 
propagation of their kind according to 
settled laws. This is a distinct advance 
in the conception of presence. 

In animal life, equipped with sensory 
perception, not immobile in an environ- 
ment of necessity but mobile in an en- 
vironment of choice, presence means 
still more. The lower phases of pres- 
ence enter into its experience but there 
is superadded thereto another sort of 
presence, that gives it an expanded 
world. It has more than automatic per- 

[9] 



PRESENCE 

ception which is the height of the plant's 
triumph. It has brain perception and 
that limited kind of thought, which 
might be described as habit-thought, 
thought creative of those habits which 
make for it the most suitable world 
available for its preservation and pros- 
perity. By the power of animal con- 
sciousness it establishes relationships ac- 
cording to its liking, automatically ac- 
cepting affinities, and when it cannot 
avoid antagonisms, quelling them by 
force. 

The world of things, animals, or men 
is the sum total of their several rela- 
tionships. In each instance, physically 
speaking, this includes — and in the case 
of an inanimate body is solely — a ma- 
terial universe. But the universe is 
more of a universe in a steadily rising 

[ 10 ] 



PRESENCE 

scale to each succeeding kingdom of 
being, because of inherent elements or 
faculties, which recreate for their respec- 
tive kingdoms the world, or such part 
of it, as they are capable of creating 
contacts with. The world is one thing 
to a rock, another to a plant, another 
to an animal, another to a man. There 
are varying degrees and kinds of pres- 
ence, the degrees uniting the objects to, 
the kinds distinguishing them from, 
one another. So far as a man partakes, 
or shares in the properties, of raw mat- 
ter or a thing, plant, animal, his world 
is that of those below him in the scale of 
existence, but he has within him that 
which, if he remains human, compels 
him to revise creation and bring into 
view a new and superior world all his 
own, for man is a creature of ideas and 

c 11 ] 



PRESENCE 
ideals. He has a higher consciousness 
which separates him from all below him 
and opens up to him an entirely new 
world of contacts automatic and voli- 
tional. The kinds of contact or pres- 
ence which he shares, though it may be 
in a higher degree, with those phases 
of creation below him, give him a sub- 
tle connection and sympathy with the 
whole universe. His lower conscious- 
ness is a hand stretched out to whatever 
else possesses it ; likewise his higher con- 
sciousness. It is this latter that forms 
foundation for a race-wide unity, and 
stretching upward in amazing venture- 
someness, claims God for a companion 
and maintains that man is made in 
God's image, which is another way of 
saying that the Divine and the human 
modes of presence are one. 

[ 12 ] 



PRESENCE 

Let us consider this whole question 
of human contacts — man with things, 
man w T ith man, and man with God and 
His Kingdom. 

1. M an with things. The original re- 
lation between man and things is auto- 
matic. Presence in the early life of an 
infant is unconscious or subconscious. 
It is unmoral and sensory. But it be- 
comes volitional with extraordinary ra- 
pidity. If at the beginning an infant 
thinks at all, thought and action are co- 
incident and indistinguishable from one 
another. After a while the human per- 
ceptive faculty breaks away from au- 
tomatism and begins that career of ex- 
ploration and adventure, which marks 
man as man, furnishing each with an in- 
dividuality more separate and clear cut 
than anything else in creation. When 

[ 13 ] 



PRESENCE 

things are individualized man is per- 
sonalized. 

Mere sense perception is inadequate 
for even the least human being. It is 
noticeable in the case of a child, prog- 
ress in the use of all its perceptive facul- 
ties, however rapid, is slow relatively to 
the development of animals. Instinct 
operates quickly and unerringly in the 
chick that picks its way out of its shell 
prison, and it needs only a maternal 
warning cluck or a cheery call, now and 
again, to make it quite as wise as its 
mother. But the intuitive faculties of 
an infant are insufficient without con- 
stant and close superintendence and 
guidance, even to keep it from dying. 
Physical incompetence awaits training 
before muscles are invigorated and co- 
ordinated for self protective or produc- 

[ I* ] 



PRESENCE 

tive activity, and the groping intuitions 
await the aid of the steady hand of ma- 
ture intelligence before the child can 
dispense with paternal and maternal 
support. 

In human life there grows up with 
the sense values of the intelligence an 
idea-perception, so that from the be- 
ginning of real human consciousness the 
man lives in two worlds. Things cease 
to be mere things. That is to say, mere 
sense perception tells but half the tale. 
Things are discovered to have an in- 
terior capable of endless exploration. 
Not that things may not be treated sole- 
ly as such; but for man to do this is 
not to grow up, or else to commit vio- 
lence against himself and forfeit his 
manhood. But it is so difficult a thing 
to do, that seldom is there to be found 

[ 15 ] 



PRESENCE 

a human being so self desecrated as to 
be beyond the pale of recovery. The 
bruised reed may yet become noble veg- 
etation; the smouldering flax may yet 
burst into living flame — such is the ver- 
dict of One who knew what was in man, 
whether saint or profligate. 

Human development may be said to 
consist in progress in the discovery and 
appropriation of the contents of things 
and persons. Culture reaches its ze- 
nith when the largest and most inti- 
mate relationships have been established 
with reality. Human experience, what 
is characteristically and exclusively hu- 
man in experience, begins when auto- 
matic presence is changed into volitional 
presence. Curiously enough in the 
course of time the volitional may be said 
to become automatic again. Repeated 

[ 16 ] 



PRESENCE 

choice ends in the will becoming auto- 
matic in the direction of its habitual 
selection. At the same time the will, 
always creating and always repudiating 
automatism, is thereby being trained 
into a freedom which not only makes 
it accurate and quick in decision, but 
opens up a constantly enlarging world 
wherein to exercise that most delight- 
ful, though at times distressful, gift, 
the power of choice. 

To man, and to man alone in the uni- 
verse we know, the world is a world of 
symbols. A thing is never a mere ob- 
ject of sense perception, if the man who 
observes it is at all human. Of course, 
too, the inside of things is never a con- 
stant factor, though it has what is con- 
stant in it. The thing varies with the 
person who beholds. But in this it is 

[ !7 ] 



PRESENCE 
invariable that it has an inside, roomy or 
restricted. The character and assort- 
ment of contents are to some extent de- 
pendent upon the wealth or poverty of 
ideas in the observer — his power of in- 
sight. The more he sees, the more he 
is able to see. For the normal man 
nothing is common or unclean. All 
comes from heaven and is steeped in 
heaven. Its association with person- 
ality equips it to serve personality, 
"Little Boy Blue's" toys contain so 
much of Little Boy Blue, that the days 
that are gone stalk forth into the pres- 
ent, and the vanished form seeks the 
father's arms. 

Thus it is that things cease to be sole- 
ly things. We make them enter into 
our world or become a presence by re- 
lating them to our consciousness. We 

[ 18] 



PRESENCE 
enrich them with our own wealth. They 
have capacity for that which personality 
puts in them, even God. The more vo- 
litional their presence becomes the finer 
and fuller their contents prove to be. 
The common thing becomes the symbol 
of the uncommon, and our world of 
things is full of windows into the eter- 
nal. Indeed human life consists large- 
ly in our eternizing things. This is not 
to say that a thing is merely a mirror 
which reflects the face of the beholder. 
It plays that part, but it possesses also 
its own inherent attributes or character, 
which abide unchanged by any concep- 
tual estimate of them. 

It is obvious that if a man contents 
himself with automatic presence he 
must deteriorate into what is akin to a 
thing. If he fails to convert the auto- 

[ 19 ] 



PRESENCE 

matic into the volitional, his sensory 
sensitiveness is so great that he will 
come under the domination of things, 
and so himself become not only a thing 
but a subsidiary thing. That he is a 
complex thing, or animated mechanism, 
only emphasizes the degradation. Those 
whose intelligence is never trained and 
who are bound by cruel circumstances 
to the wheel of dehumanizing poverty, 
and those who scorch their intelligence 
at the furnace of luxury, or strain their 
manhood toward the acquisition of 
things in order to whet their sensual 
appetite with delicate flavors, belong in 
the same category, though the latter 
are the lower of the two. The sin of 
idolatry consisted in Mosaic days, as 
now, in the substitution of an auto- 
matic, or sensory, for a volitional, or 

[ SO ] 



PRESENCE 

symbolic presence, of substituting a 
thing for a person, of subordinating 
persons to things. The result is always 
the same — "they that make them are 
like unto them, and so are all they that 
put their trust in them." The man- 
thing is of all things the most unworthy 
and empty. 

Again if man satisfies himself with 
mere sense perception and sense de- 
velopment, or, in other words, contents 
himself with animal presences, he not 
only takes his place among the animals 
but provides himself with the lowest 
place. So far as he creates volitional 
presence, it is of a sensual sort, and dis- 
regards laws which the ordinary animal 
honors. The habitual roysterer and 
rake, the gourmet and sensualist, the 
drunkard and pleasure seeker, are not 

[ 21 ] 



PRESENCE 

decent enough to consort with the ordi- 
nary herd of cattle. 

2. Man with man. Here we have the 
highest degree of natural affinity. But 
here, as in all human relationships, au- 
tomatic presence must be built upon and 
made volitional. Human society is the 
creation of the will of man to be pres- 
ent to man. Mere contact, physical 
contiguity, between man and man does 
not constitute human presence. If man 
were thing, or animal only, it might be 
so. But human presence is of a higher 
sort. A man may not be viewed merely 
as baker, fisherman, statesman. Slav- 
ery is the logical result of estimating 
man as an economic thing, or in any way 
as a mere convenience. Manhood is 
never to be viewed or treated as less 
than manhood. In the world of men 

[ 22 ] 



PRESENCE 

all contacts must be human or human- 
ized. 

Man is fully present to man only so 
far as there is mutual and volitional 
give and take. Presence is due to self- 
expression in general or special terms, 
or both. This is given or withheld at 
will. A man may be nearer the farthest 
star than his nearest neighbor. The star 
through the spectroscope yields up the 
secrets of its inmost being, whereas the 
man robes himself in inscrutability. 
This reaches its summit in antagonism, 
that is, in absence. Who could have 
been more completely absent than at 
the end was Christ in the presence of 
Pilate? Pilate had not the power, or 
refused to use the power, to recognize 
Christ. Christ reached after every pos- 
sible point of contact afforded by Pi- 

[23 ] 



PRESENCE 

late's character and attitude until the 
last avenue was closed. 

Hence human presence not only has 
its degrees, but its volitional degrees. A 
man is as little, or as much, present as 
he chooses. He can give or withhold. 
In the case of Christ and Pilate, though 
Pilate was present to Christ, Christ was 
not always or fully present to Pilate. 
Christ read Pilate through and through. 
He needed not that anyone should bear 
witness concerning man; for He Him- 
self knew what was in man. On the 
other hand sordid motives bound Pi- 
late's eyes so that he could not see 
Christ. Jesus gave him no answer. He 
was absent. 

It is always the case when a man pre- 
tends to be what he is not, or when from 
selfish motives, he makes an effort to 

[ 24 ] 



PRESENCE 
create a distinguished impression of 
himself on others, it is a false impres- 
sion. He creates not a relationship be- 
tween himself and his fellows, but 
rather builds a barrier preventing such 
relationship. He enunciates an ab- 
sence. 

Volitional presence has unique power. 
A man may offer his presence to a fel- 
low without gaining response. The 
other man may refuse self expression 
and meet advances with repudiation and 
hatred. But the friend may to a cer- 
tain extent compel the other's presence. 
He may seize upon and hold wise fel- 
lowship with the best of his foe. "I 
would be friend to all — the foe — the 
friendless," that is a triumph of human 
presence. "Love them that hate you," 
is not a sentimental rhapsody, but a calm 

[ 25 1 



PRESENCE 

recognition of the fact, that volitional 
presence can both press itself success- 
fully on one refusing to receive it, and 
seize upon the presence of one refusing 
to give it. It is this which forms the 
most thrilling part of our whole won- 
derful life of adventure and struggle. 
Love is, in its supreme triumphs, vo- 
litional rather than emotional. It cre- 
ates affinities out of antagonisms, pres- 
ences out of absences, friends out of en- 
emies. Herein it displays its magic 
power, and finds its secret rejoicings. 
Its zest is for men rather than for se- 
lected men. Its method is to draw out 
the richest presence by offering the 
richest presence. Its law is devotion to 
persons, beginning with God and end- 
ing with man, the last and the least. Its 
domain, therefore, is everywhere, all the 

[26] 



PRESENCE 

time. Love, and consequently human 
presence, cannot be expressed in terms 
of time or space. Nothing can loosen 
the grasp of love on a presence which 
it wills to retain. To attempt to do so 
is only to tighten its hold. 

Friendship consists in mutual and 
constant volitional presence. Physical 
contacts are eternized between friends. 
But they are not permanently essential. 
We have a high degree of sensitiveness 
that is extra spatial and extra temporal. 
Friendship, though fostered by, is not 
dependent upon, automatic or sensory 
presence. Often it is deepened and 
eternized best by physical absence. 
Christ enunciated a truth of wide appli- 
cation and bearing when he said to His 
friends, "It is expedient for you that I 
go away. If I go not away the Com- 

[ 27 ] 



PRESENCE 
forter will not come unto you. If I 
go away I will send Him unto you." 

Human presence is so completely vo- 
litional that distance is no bar to its op- 
eration. My friends, whether in the 
uttermost parts of the Earth or in Par- 
adise, are with me when I will them so 
to be, and up to a certain point, in the 
degree I will them to be. Time is as 
little a barrier as space. Plato, Francis 
of Assisi or Lincoln comes at my bid- 
ding or beckoning. It is more than an 
act of memory that brings them, though 
that noble faculty has its share not 
merely in recalling but restoring and 
transfiguring past relationships. When 
there is developed sensitiveness there is 
no knowing how conscious such fellow- 
ship or presence may become. The wire- 
less telephone may be a sign of a future 

[ 28 ] 



PRESENCE 

possible correspondence between soul 
and soul where space or time interpose 
to check fellowship. This is speculative, 
but authenticated psychic experience in 
numerous cases tends to encourage be- 
lief in it. 

In dreams souls, wddely separated, 
often touch and mingle. Sleep among 
other things is the will's relaxation or 
holiday. It is the suspension of vo- 
litional and conscious contacts. The will 
is the most unremitting of human facul- 
ties. It is the controlling force of life, 
and when quiescent it gives the rest of 
the human make-up its opportunity for 
repose. There are times when the af- 
fections, the imagination, the reasoning 
powers, wake up before the will. So, 
unrestrained, they dart to their nearest 
affinity — the affections to the most 

[ 29 ] 



PRESENCE 

available friend, the intellect to its most 
absorbing task, the imagination to the 
nearest garden. The awakened facul- 
ties are, without the active leadership of 
the will, like a child wandering about 
the countryside without a guardian, and 
often they lose themselves in the la- 
byrinths of the grotesque and ill-pro- 
portioned. This is the stuff that dreams 
are made of. 

Death sets powers free so that pres- 
ence may be extended. This is not a 
speculative assertion but a fact of his- 
tory capped by the common experience 
of men of to-day. The idealization of 
those who have gone is simply their self- 
realization as viewed from our side. 
The incidental faults of weakness, the 
contra- volitional self, drops out of sight 
and we see the character in its main f ea- 

[ 30 ] 



PRESENCE 
tures. It is a pity that the living are 
not judged by their contemporaries 
with the same lofty effort to be fair 
that characterizes our judgment of the 
dead. Though a man's character is 
declared in his actions, frequently the 
moral color of an action is to be 
determined by his character, rather 
than vice versa. 

The greater a man is the greater his 
power of presence. A world-hero like 
the Buddha, or Livingstone, is one whose 
presence is universally available — not 
as an echo or an influence but as a per- 
son, not as one who lived but as one who 
lives. How conscious this output of 
presence is to the person from whom it 
flows, how much due to present propul- 
sion, I cannot say. But anyone who has 
eternized his mortality no longer be- 

[ 31 ] 



presence 

longs to time but has become an eternal 
force. He practises eternity. He has 
gone beyond the Aristotelian injunction 
which of late it has become popular to 
quote: "Wherefore, in so far as we can, 
we must practise immortality, and do 
our utmost to live according to the high- 
est principle within us." The immor- 
tality of influence perpetuated in time 
is real though limited. But it is always 
personal pressure that tells. True char- 
acter not only refuses to die at the bid- 
ding of death, but stands forth with new 
and compelling power at the very mo- 
ment when the logic of space and time 
argue vehemently for its cessation. The 
eternal cannot die, because by the law 
of its being it is not subject to death: 
it is indifferent to it where it does not 
use it to its own advantage. What we 

[ 32 ] 



PRESENCE 

call immortal is that aspect of the eter- 
nal which finds expression in volitional 
presence. After death an eternized per- 
sonality lives as spirit, personal spirit, 
unobscured by the veil of the flesh. The 
presence not only abides, but continues 
to operate, here in a refined manner. It 
is not that it alters its mode of opera- 
tion, but that we who remain perceive 
that which hitherto was only partially 
apparent to us. We often attribute in- 
fluence to the incidentals of personality 
instead of to the eternized personality 
which death unveils. So far as it af- 
fects persons and builds them up it is 
because it is personal. The sole up- 
builder of personality is personality. 
Things are incapable of making human 
character, and so are ideas, except to 
the extent that they are personified or 

[ 33 ] 



PRESENCE 

recognized as being controlled and di- 
rected by personality. 

The question of volitional malevolent 
presence could be discussed in terms 
similar to those used for the considera- 
tion of volitional benevolent presence. 
With the exception of a single thought 
in this connection I shall not dwell upon 
it. This must be remembered, however, 
it is only like that can be present to like. 
Enmity is absence. Light has no fel- 
lowship with darkness. It can have 
none. Hence a malevolent presence 
cannot force itself upon us so as to pol- 
lute us, so as really to touch our life, 
unless we ourselves will evil. It may 
make an appeal to us for entrance into 
our audience chamber where fellow- 
ship is alone possible, but that is only 
to tempt us. As long as our volitional 

[ 34 ] 



PRESENCE 

presence is withheld all is well. A de- 
gree of aloofness is reached by repeated 
acts of volitional absence in the face 
of an appeal for fellowship on the part 
of evil, that makes the evil non-existent 
so far as we are concerned. It no 
longer has power even to tempt us. 
There must be evil in us volitionally re- 
sponding to that which assails us, be- 
fore evil is present to us as a deterrent 
force. As long and as often as we meet 
it by volitional absence it fails to find 
foothold in our world and becomes for 
us decreasingly a reality. When it 
speaks we answer not a word. 

3. Man with God. Man is always vo- 
litionally present to God. God is omni- 
present in the sense of always holding 
all men in His consciousness. God is 
always automatically or unconsciously 

[ 35 ] 



PRESENCE 
or subconsciously present to man. Re- 
ligion is the making of the automatic 
volitional, the unconscious conscious, 
the sensory spiritual, the physical sym- 
bolic. 

God's presence among men was fo- 
cussed by Christ. In a sense Christ cre- 
ated God's presence among men. He 
made it available. God was manifested, 
that is made present, in Him. It is fit- 
ting at this point reverently to conjec- 
ture, that one reason why God chose man 
through whom to make his highest reve- 
lation was because man is, of all crea- 
tion, the most intelligible, the most pres- 
ent, object to man. Humanity is more 
present to us than animals of the lower 
sort or than things. Human life is the 
only thing we know from a constant 
and inside experience. Moreover it is 

[ 36 ] 



PRESENCE 

the most worthy, as well as the least un- 
intelligible, of things created. Every; 
attempt of religion to apprehend God 
through animals and things, as the final 
symbol has ended in idolatry or the sub- 
stitution of darkness for light, the sym- 
bol for that symbolized. When things 
or ideas rather than persons are given 
first place, or too high attention, in the 
processes of religion, God becomes ob- 
scured, because the less rather than the 
more intelligible is chosen as the medi- 
um of approach. 

As a historic figure Christ has a pres- 
ence of the same sort as, though in a 
higher degree than, every other great 
personality. His presence is that of 
Plato and the Buddha, the difference 
being that theirs is in an imperfect, and 
His in the supreme, degree. His char- 

[37 ] 



PRESENCE 

acter and relationships were complete, 
therefore His presence is universal. 
His volitional presence was laid at the 
feet of mankind for their acceptance. 
Herein is love not that we loved Him 
but that He first loved us. He willed 
to be and eternally is the Light of the 
World, the Bread of Life, the Way, 
the Truth and the Life. In His 
mortality He was such a Personality 
as men had hitherto only dimly con- 
ceived of. 

But Christ is no bare historic figure. 
His presence is not due to mere uncon- 
scious immortality. God's eternity 
rests at the heart of Christ's immortal- 
ity. "Lo I am with you always even 
unto the ages of ages," is the necessary 
result of His being who He is. The 
universal Person must offer a univer- 

[ 38 ] 



PRESENCE 

sal presence, human and Divine, the Di- 
vine through the human. 

When the mortality of Christ was 
finally conquered, He delocalized His 
presence, not to decrease, but on the con- 
trary to intensify it, to make possible 
a new and inclusive localization. The 
Christ spirit represents not a lesser but 
a greater, not a contracted but an ex- 
panded, self-personification or person- 
alization. The more spiritual a person- 
ality becomes, the more intensely real it 
grows to be, and so the more widely and 
deeply available. His presence be- 
comes an atmosphere and influence 
without losing its transcendent com- 
pleteness in the luxuriance of its in- 
creased immanence. The presence of 
the Paraclete took the place of the lo- 
calized Christ not as a bare substitute 

[ 39 ] 



PRESENCE 

but as that which constitutes a superior 
presence, including all that it held for- 
merly and adding greatness to great- 
ness, riches to wealth. In going, Christ 
came in a fulness which was wanting 
before He went, the fulness of added 
availability, a higher degree of presence. 
But just as before, His presence is all 
willed and graded. It is the presence 
of a Person. He is present under speci- 
fied conditions for declared purposes, 
whether in the midst of two or three 
gathered in His name, or in the pure 
waters of Baptism and the simple feast 
of Communion (i. e., fellowship or 
presence). He encourages representa- 
tive acts of localization, that in finding 
Him here and there we may have prac- 
tise so as to be able to find Him every- 
where. The most wonderful localizing 

[ 40 ] 



PRESENCE 

of God is implied in the saying of 
Christ that "the Kingdom of God is 
within you." It is one whether we lo- 
cate God here in a sacrament, or there 
beyond space — near or far it is localiz- 
ing Him. To say that He is immanent, 
filling His creation, is localizing Him 
quite as much as to postulate His pres- 
ence at any point in His creation. If 
my limitations as man (or, may be, it 
is my glorious liberty as God's child) 
require me to localize Him in order to 
make real His presence, I prefer lo- 
calizing Him in a sacrament of His in- 
stitution, rather than in a flower of His 
handiwork. The flower is the product 
of His first creative work; the sacra- 
ment is the product of His second cre- 
ative work — creation playing upon cre- 
ation. The sin of localizing, when it 

[ 41 ] 



PRESENCE 

is a sin, consists not in localizing, but 
in exclusive localizing — here, and not 
there, instead of there because here, here 
for this purpose, there for that purpose, 
transcendent because immanent, imma- 
nent because transcendent, immanent 
and transcendent because a Person. 

Symbols of God as revealed in Christ 
must always connote God's presence in 
a high degree. To preserve or use a 
symbol of God in any way short of the 
sacramental would be to empty it of its 
meaning, and create a religious distrac- 
tion instead of a religious aid. So far 
as church sacraments are an aid to the 
intensification of the Christ-spirit pres- 
ence, it is because of a recognition of 
representative localization and immedi- 
acy, not of an act of stimulated memory, 
groping through a remote century, in a 

[ 4g ] 



PRESENCE 

search for a Christ that once was, a 
presence of yesterday. Carrying logic 
to its pitiless conclusion a religious sym- 
bol which is not a symbol of Our Lord's 
presence is a symbol of His absence, 
and therefore abhorrent formalism. To 
say that Christ instituted a sacrament is 
tantamount to saying that He represen- 
tatively localized Himself, in the chosen 
token for specified purposes and under 
stated conditions. 

In His intensification of relation- 
ships, Christ changed "with" to "in" — 
the spirit of truth "abideth with you 
and shall be in you." Presence finds its 
completion in interpenetration — "abide 
in me and I in you." There is nothing 
beyond this. Life in Christ is sufficient 
for here and there. Hope can discover 
nothing higher. The Beatific Vision, 

[43] 



PRESENCE 
theology's best attempt to express the 
summum bonum of life, is presence that 
is at once constant and ecstatic. God 
is all in all. 

To be in Christ is to grasp God as 
revealed in Christ as our internal life. 
^ It is to eternize time and space with their 
respective contents. "Eternity no longer 
hovers over time as an abstraction; it 
underlies time as a reality." "Time" 
becomes "a moving image of eter- 
nity." The difference between Christ 
in us and we in Christ is the difference 
between the earlier and later stages of 
development. At first in moments of 
comfortable fellowship and vivid, con- 
centrated presence, the greater in glow- 
ing humility seems to find room within 
our small selves. Then as the years go 
on we find ourselves in Christ — the 

[ 44 ] 



PRESENCE 

lesser in the greater. All is Christ — He 
is in the air we breathe, He speaks in 
the common affairs of life, in the sun- 
shine and in the clouds. It was the same 
with the Apostles. First it was face 
to face comradeship, then He went 
away after the flesh that He might 
come after the spirit. They who had 
been with Him, and upon and in whom 
He had fastened His gracious presence, 
grew to be in Him. Then to them as 
to us, to live is Christ. Our first and 
basic world is Christ ; our second, all that 
is not Christ as interpreted by and seen 
through Him. The Christ-spirit is the 
spiritual ether binding man to man as 
the ether of space binds world to world. 
Prayer is no mere individual or local 
act: it is a potent energy that agitates 
the whole universe of presences as often 

[ 45 ] 



PRESENCE 

as it is set in operation. It creates, ex- 
tends and intensifies presence, unhin- 
dered by the mathematics of time or dis- 
tance. It is a phase of the communion 
of saints in volitional activity. Prayer 
in Christ can never be less than inter- 
cessory in its direction, for the Chris- 
tian self can never move without refer- 
ence to others — first in the broad im- 
pulse of life and afterward in its sep- 
arate details. There is nothing so ex- 
quisitely and increasingly sensitive as 
the Christ fellowship or body. In 
Christ all things are ours, whether per- 
sons or the world or life or death or 
things present or things to come : all are 
ours; and we are Christ's; and Christ 
is God's. 

Prayer for others is the most subtle 
as well as the greatest and deepest force 

[46 ] 



PRESENCE 

in human society. In its Christian 
form it is the volitional placing of the 
power of Christ as we have apprehend- 
ed, and been apprehended by, Him at 
the disposal of the individual or the 
multitude. Every man is present to 
every man in greater or lesser degree, 
as we have seen. Prayer establishes the 
crowning degree of presence. It begins 
in an act, or series of acts and ends in 
a disposition. It is the directive force 
of our real internal wealth, converting 
it into a subtle presence advantageous 
to others, w r hen it is not translated into 
terms of recognizable service. It does 
not mean making a passive Christ ac- 
tive in behalf of others, or an unwilling 
Christ willing, but it means adding my 
power in Christ to yours. It is afford- 
ing Him an additional avenue of ap- 

[ 47 ] 



PRESENCE 

proach to others. Just as in physics the 
force of attraction lays hold of every 
ounce of ponderable matter there is, in 
order the more completely to influence 
the rest, so in the volitional spiritual so- 
ciety the Church, Christ lays hold of 
each personality, not for its own sake 
alone, but in order the more completely 
to exercise influence over and establish 
presence in the rest. Intercessory prayer 
is not a scattering of good wishes in the 
air toward some one we desire to serve; 
neither is it the vocal or silent emission 
of pious hopes in the direction of God. 
It is the orderly operation of a vital 
energy, an immediate transmitting of 
life, where the person prayed for is ac- 
tively receptive, and the creation of 
fresh opportunity for him, whatever his 
temper of mind. By the force of spir- 

[ 48 ] 



PRESENCE 
itual projection, which eliminates space 
by ignoring it, I lay my life over 
against that of my friend, simultane- 
ously establishing definite and conscious 
contact with God. Presence is thereby 
intensified in both directions, Manward 
and Godward, and my life becomes 
more open for God's use as a social ve- 
hicle for the bestowal of His gifts. In- 
tercessory prayer makes personality a 
sacrament. Prayer intensifies the Christ 
presence in those we pray for. Further 
it must perforce draw taut the cord that 
binds men, making presence, visible and 
invisible, increasingly intimate, and 
friendship a glory superior to the clouds 
of misunderstanding and the sins of un- 
faithfulness. This is a principle quite 
intelligible to anyone who thinks. I 
speak of a fact, not a theory. Life 

[ 49 ] 



PRESENCE 

passes into life through specialized phy- 
sical contacts — the touch of the nurse, 
the transfusion of blood. Volitional 
spiritual presence is at any rate no less 
powerful than volitional physical pres- 
ence of the intense sort indicated. Fol- 
lowing this analogy it would appear as 
though we can become agents of power 
for others, only so far as we ourselves 
are struggling up to the moral and 
spiritual heights which we covet for 
others. A truthful man becomes a ve- 
hicle which God can use to aid an un- 
truthful man to become truthful. It 
is only the self-restrained life that can 
pray effectually for the unrestrained 
life. Otherwise no new avenue for 
God's controlling power to flow is pre- 
sented, only a desire is expressed that 
another should receive that which the 

[ 50 ] 



PRESENCE 

petitioner himself implicitly at least re- 
jects. The injunction to sanctify our- 
selves for the sake of others, that they 
too may be sanctified, thus takes on a 
new and inspiring meaning. By prayer 
we are enabled to offer our strength in 
Christ, or Christ's strength through us, 
to our fellows. 

Enough has been said to illustrate the 
principle of Presence as I understand 
it. It opens up a rich variety of experi- 
ence, and makes the Eternal as clear to 
the higher consciousness, at moments at 
any rate, as the tropical noonday, in 
which I write the closing words of my 
treatise, is to the eye that is gladdened 
by the beauty it reveals. Human great- 
ness only begins to express itself in that 
creative power which, in recent years, 

[ 51 ] 



PRESENCE 

has rejoiced inordinately in its ability 
to invent or to organize matter. There 
is another sphere, as yet but slightly ex- 
ploited, where work, equally creative 
though of a much more enduring char- 
acter, is waiting for human operations 
— the sphere to which St. Paul refers 
when he says, "we look not at the things 
which are seen, but at the things which 
are not seen." We shall never be able 
to vision more than a fraction of what 
we may know and be, until we Chris- 
tians learn as a body to practice eter- 
nity unremittingly and arduously. Spi- 
noza's grand words are to the point — 
"If the way that leads to the mind's 
power over the affections and to its lib- 
erty appears as excessively arduous, 
yet it can be found. And that indeed 
must be arduous which is so rarely 

[ 52 ] 



PRESENCE 

found. For how could it happen, were 
salvation easy, that it should be neglect- 
ed by almost everyone? But, in truth, 
all things great are as difficult as they 
are rare." It was, however, the end 
of Christ's errand among men to put 
the really great within the hard, not 
easy, reach of all. "The cross" — the 
emblem of the great and the arduous 
combined, "a practice of death in life to 
attain the deepest life," is our inspira- 
tion and our discipline. 



[ 53 ] 



By the Rt. Rev. CHARLES H. BRENT, D.D. 

Bishop of the Philippine Islands 



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